After six months as Secretary of State, she has seized control over U.S. foreign policy. Now comes her toughest test--finding a way out of Iraq. An intimate look at Rice's world

When visitors arrive to see Condoleezza Rice on the seventh floor of the State Department, they are seated down the corridor from Rice's office, in a drawing room decorated with patterned carpets, Georgian furniture and a grandfather clock. Above one sofa hangs a framed, four-page document, typewritten and signed with the initials "GM." It is the original copy of the most famous speech ever made by a U.S. Secretary of State: George Marshall's commencement address at Harvard in 1947, the speech that led to the passage of the European Recovery Act, later known as the Marshall Plan. By today's standards, the...